Hello Tomorrow: the Future of Connectivity (20 October, 2016)

The event “Hello Tomorrow: The Future of Connectivity”, was hosted today on 20th October 2016 at the premises of the Higher Education of Pakistan Islamabad, jointly organized by the French Embassy in Pakistan, the HEC and the Hello Tomorrow Pakistan team.

Hello Tomorrow is a French initiative to support innovation and entrepreneurship in the world, and especially in Pakistan: Islamabad was chosen among 10 cities across the world to speak about innovation.

During the half-day event, many speakers, including two guests from Paris among them, Arnaud de la Tour one of the founders of the initiative and Sarah Pedroza, highlighted disruptive technologies that will shape the future of connectivity, addressing the current societal and industrial problems and their solutions in Pakistan.

By encouraging collaboration between local entrepreneurs, researchers, investors and industrials, this initiative created a new momentum for change in Pakistan’s innovation ecosystem.

“Mr. Chairman of the Higher Education Commission, dear participants who I know come from all over Pakistan, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a real pleasure and a great honor to be part of this event today and I would like to thank the Higher Education Commission, its chairman and his team, for hosting us today in this beautiful auditorium.

We had a first edition of Hello Tomorrow last year, at the French Embassy, it was more modest, since it was a gathering of around 50 people. But I was very impressed by the number of start-ups in Pakistan and by the amazing trends in scientific and technical innovation in Pakistan, maybe due to the fact that Pakistan is a country with a lot of talented people and a country with a young population. Innovation goes very well with youth, even if older people can also be innovative.

I would like here to pay tribute to the efforts of the government of Pakistan to promote innovation and links between startups and universities, economic actors and financial institutions.

That is also the goal of Hello Tomorrow. Hello Tomorrow is an international, non-profit initiative. It is aimed at promoting young entrepreneurs from all over the world, with projects that are based on the development of innovative technology.

Hello Tomorrow aims at swiftly establishing links between young talented individuals and economic actors (venture capitalists, investment funds, etc ...). More generally, its goal is to foster innovation within companies of all sizes in strategic areas: energy & environment, health, transportation and mobility, food and agriculture, waste and water management, Big Data, supply chain or space.

Hello Tomorrow is a French initiative. It was created in 2011 by Xavier Duportet, a French young scientist, who was later named French entrepreneur of the year, in 2014, by MIT and by Arnaud de la Tour, who is with us today. It is a great honour to have him with us this morning. His presence emphasizes the will in France to cooperate more and build together with Pakistan a brighter future.

Today, Hello Tomorrow is a community of more than 15,000 highly skilled people (researchers, engineers, experts, entrepreneurs, investors, journalists, public actors ...) from 45 countries. This community is led locally by " Hello Tomorrow ambassadors " supported by the French diplomatic network since 2015. We have today with us the Pakistan Hello Tomorrow Ambassador, Mr. Sanwal Muneer, whom I want to thank for the organization of this great event.

In 2016 and 2017, 12 cities will host a Hello Tomorrow conference: among them San Francisco, Bangalore, Sao Paulo, Istanbul, Shanghai, Los Angeles and Islamabad.Each of these events will be dedicated to a domain echoing local and global issues, or future challenges, bringing together experts, entrepreneurs and investors in the sector. I just pick up few examples: Transportation in Bangalore / Smart city in Sao Paulo / Air quality in Shenzhen / E-Health in San Francisco / Connectivity in Islamabad.

The major event is the Global summit held in Paris, which ends the competition between startups. It concluded, this year, last Friday evening with a winner from the “Challenge grand finale”: this year Lilium Jet, a German startup.

Here, at the Embassy of France in Islamabad, it is also our motto to connect people and to build network in order to create new opportunities and to facilitate initiatives. It is also an opportunity for me to promote, in Pakistan, French entrepreneurial excellence and to underline that France is among the very first innovative countries in the world. We want to share our experience and we do support the PFAN, the Pakistan French Alumni Network, gathering the academics trained in France, through our cultural and cooperation department headed by Mr André de Bussy ; we also do support the PFBA, the Pakistan French Business Alliance, through our Economic department headed by Mr Philippe FOUET. Both of them are here today.

I wish you all a very productive session, and the very best to Hello Tomorrow Pakistan.